


not like a monster

by BlackSclera



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Self-Hatred, Self-Indulgent, Self-Mutilation, Wing AU, a bit bloody, eren hates his wings a whole lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:33:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22811686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackSclera/pseuds/BlackSclera
Summary: As Eren curls into himself, his wings mimicking the movement and curving around him protectively, he realizes that they are whole.Not a single scar, not a feather out of place.Like it never happened.
Relationships: Mikasa Ackerman & Armin Arlert & Eren Yeager
Comments: 3
Kudos: 70





	not like a monster

*

Eren hated his wings.

They made him less human, made him a little something like the monsters that roamed outside the walls, and it was with these thoughts that he finds himself experimentally cutting into the tip of his left wing with firewood clenched between his teeth and a blade he’s stolen from his father.

_If only I didn’t have them,_ he thinks, repeats until it drowns his muffled screaming, _if only I didn’t have them-_

It hurt so much that it takes him half an hour to completely cut through, and he bleeds a lot more than he is initially expecting. His blood pools under his bare feet and soaks into his clothes like water and although his vision starts to swim, he is conscious and driven with self-hatred strong enough to spur him into making another pitiful attempt of carving a considerable chunk higher up from where he’d severed the tip.

In the end, he doesn’t succeed and he slumps, flesh precariously dangling on what little he couldn’t cut through, cold sweat breaking on his temples and back despite the white-hot fire that licks at where his wings had been severed.

That is how Grisha finds him minutes later, something terrified and sad in his gaze at the sight of his seven-year-old son lying in a puddle of his own blood, his pure white wings stained with ugly brown and far too much red.

_If only I didn’t have them, then mom would still be alive._

*

“Why did you do it?” Grisha asks that night. The knife he used is beside him, gleaming brightly in the dark, and Eren feels guilt as he recognizes the look on his father’s face.

He isn’t the only one who is grieving, he remembers, and the thought makes his stomach lurch uncomfortably.

Grisha sighs and Eren carefully doesn’t meet his eyes, instead pinning his gaze on his clenched fists. Behind him, he feels more than sees the weight of the monstrous appendages shifting against his back.

They used to be a lot smaller, easily hidden under loose shirts or tightly wrapped bandages that pinned them down and hid its bulging shape. They used to be, until he turned six, and then they were dragging against the floor when he walked, tearing through shirt after shirt and they knew they couldn’t let Eren out of the house anymore.

(His mother loved his wings. She spent most of their nights running her fingers through the soft feathers, untangling them where Eren couldn’t reach, and she looks at Eren not like a monster but something precious, something fragile and dear and to be protected.

She said maybe one day, he’d be able to fly with them to see the world outside the walls, and he’d clung to those words with his small fingers, swore that he’d take them with him and they would see it together without having to fear the titans.

_It’s alright if it’s just you, Eren,_ she says, _just you is enough._

She wouldn’t have wanted this for him, for them.)

Eren feels unsettled in his own skin and he craves to find something to break to feel okay again, to make it feel right, but the feeling trickles through the tips of his fingers at the sight of his father hunched over himself, exhausted lines marring his face.

“I’m sorry,” he says and it comes out bubbling with barely tempered heat. It’s not an answer, they both know, but all the same, Grisha understands.

His father leaves without a word. He doesn’t say _‘don’t do it again’_ or hide the knife, leaving it as it is on the top of the table.

As Eren curls into himself, his wings mimicking the movement and curving around him protectively, he realizes that they are whole.

Not a single scar, not a feather out of place.

Like it never happened.

Something wretched and angry leaves his throat.

( _A monster._ )

*

He tries again. And again, and again.

He cuts higher each time, carves with steadier hands and numbed fingers until he stops crying and stops needing firewood between his teeth.

( _it heals and heals and heals and it doesn’t stop healing so he keeps cutting, keeps slashing, praying that one day, it will be enough-_ )

Eventually, he succeeds in ripping his entire right wing off his back, the now immobile appendage dropping heavily with a _thud_. It evaporates before his eyes, the same way his blood and molting feathers did, and a sense of hollow triumph fills him before his back is tearing anew and he’s _screaming_.

Eren’s teeth sink into his arm, his elbows and knees scraping painfully against the ground as his body shuddered and curled into itself. _It’s not fair_ , he thinks, cries. He did his best not to be a problem to his parents. He _knew_ how difficult it was to keep him hidden from the eyes of prying strangers under their circumstances. They wondered why he never left to help in the farm, why they never seem to see him outside for longer than a few minutes; it was unbecoming of their only son, they said, and Grisha had never retaliated but Carla didn’t quite share his lukewarm temperament. They knew the dangers of having people suspect that their son was ill.

Already, he feels the telltale heat of steam seeping between his teeth and on his skin. He healed fast, he always had, and if he’d known better, he would have done something.

If he’d known better, he would have saved his mother and taken the axe to his shoulder.

But he didn’t, and Eren thinks maybe it wasn’t the wings that made him a monster.

*

When he turns nine, he spreads his wings as far as they would go and finds himself equally sickened and mesmerized with the way they extend past his fingertips and tower threateningly behind his back. His secondaries are sweeping across the dirt, even outspread, and under the sun, the white feathers seem to glow gold.

He carries himself as high as he could and plummets into a sudden drop in the forest, winding through the trees and soaring above them seconds later, ignoring the flashes of pain where his wings get caught on rough wood and jagged rocks. He’s baring his teeth in an angry smile, speckles of amber dotting his blue-green eyes.

There is nothing that can reach him, no human eyes, no gargantuan fists, and Eren _soars_ , hatred coursing thickly through his veins, his clothes clinging damply to his skin as he flew over the smooth walls that protected them from man-eating monsters who had red on their tongues and shattered limbs between their white, blunted teeth. He soars until he sees the cluttering of deformed giants wandering blindly in unstable gaits, soars until his lungs are seizing from how high he’s flown, and through the rhythmic beating of his wings, steady and not quite powerful but strong enough to carry his weight, something breaks.

_Just like them,_ the thought thunders through him, something inhuman unfurling from his chest.

His wings fold, and Eren lets himself fall.

*

(He comes home that night feeling more human than he’d ever been, steam hissing underneath his fingernails and through his matted hair, teal eyes nearly overtaken by molten gold.

He comes home _wingless_ , a feral smile carved high into his cheeks.)

*

Mikasa has eyes of forged steel and Armin has a kind smile that belied the brutality of his wit.

They are inseparable, young yet bristled fingers tight around each other’s, and some days they slip, their small hands reverently ghosting over his naked back. They’ve seen it once; Mikasa with white feathers drenched in red, Armin with his hands buried inches deep into its flesh.

They’ve seen it once, and they look at Eren like keeping his wings hidden from human eyes doesn’t make a difference.

( _Not like a monster but something precious, something fragile and dear and to be protected,_ it echoes in a voice that sounds too much like his mother’s, and Eren doesn’t quite believe but he stops cutting into his wings.)

*

Then, the walls fall.

Armin screams, and Mikasa cries.

Eren soars into the sky and doesn’t return.

Not until years later.

*


End file.
